Epitaph

by Mary Doria Russell

  Small, dark. Wild curling hair. Flashing eyes, and a great show of “Aren’t I adorable?” The little tramp showed up at Doc’s table, saying something about “I’m always lucky when I play you, Doc,” and Doc said, “Luck has nothin’ to do with it, sugar.” That must have been when the fight began.

  “Please,” Kate begged Wyatt when they passed by the hotel bar on their way to the lobby. “Let me have one drink. Just one!”

  “Shut up,” Wyatt snapped, pausing at the desk only long enough to tell the clerk, “Collect from Behan. He checked her in. It’s his bill.”

  Behan? she thought. Who’s Behan?

  The sunlight was catastrophic. Wyatt steered her off the boardwalk and across the crowded street. “You’re hurting my arm!” she cried. “Where are we going?”

  “To court. You’re going to take it all back.”

  “Take what back? What’s going on?”

  The courtroom was already filled when Wyatt marched her up the aisle and sat her down in the front row. A bailiff called, “All rise for Judge Spicer.” Thoroughly frightened now, she looked around, trying to make sense of all this, but her eyes went wide when Doc was brought in. Unshaven. In shirtsleeves. Shackled.

  “Goddammit, Behan,” Virgil Earp cried. “Take those things off him! You should have had Luther King in irons, not Doc Holliday!”

  “Once bitten, twice shy,” the sheriff said reasonably. “I don’t want another murder suspect escaping.”

  Murder suspect? Kate thought. Wait! That’s Behan?

  Suddenly the argument over that girl came back to her. Kate knew faro mechanics when she saw them—the sleight of hand, the nudge of bets from one card on the layout to another. Most dealers cheated punters that way, but Doc was feeding money to this little bitch, and Kate demanded to know why. The girl was just a friend, Doc claimed. He helped her out now and then. And if Miss Josephine were more than that, he muttered, Kate had a hell of a nerve expectin’ monogamy from others. And then . . . what happened then? A lot of yelling.

  She left the Alhambra, went looking for a way to get back at Doc. There was a saloon just down the street. The bartender there hated Doc’s guts, too, and showed her his crippled hand. Suddenly there was a handsome, half-Irish charmer at her side. Johnny, he said his name was. And he was so sympathetic, keeping her glass filled, asking why she was angry at Doc. When she told him about that little tramp, his eyes went small. “Infidelity is a terrible thing,” he said. Commiseration. More whiskey. They were two jilted lovers, taking comfort in each other’s company, but at some point Johnny started talking about that stagecoach robbery, suggesting things about Doc. None of it made any sense, but she didn’t care. She just kept drinking, agreeing with Johnny about what a louse Doc was, the way Johnny had agreed with her about what a slut Josie was.

  “Mary Katherine Harony, approach the bench.”

  She was sworn in, shown a piece of paper, asked if that was her signature scrawled on the bottom.

  “Yes,” she said, “but I don’t remember signing nothing.”

  She was told to be quiet. Her statement was read to the court. Dr. John H. Holliday had planned the Kinnear stagecoach attack. He was a deadly shot. She’d seen him kill dozens of men. He told her he’d killed Budd Philpot and the passenger, both. The Earps had inside information about Wells Fargo shipments and they knew when the strongbox would be full. They were in on the robbery, too, and wore disguises; that’s why Bob Paul didn’t recognize them. She’d seen the disguises in a steamer trunk in Doc’s room. The disguises were made of black rope tied to look like long beards.

  That was when people started to laugh.

  “I never said none of that!” she cried as the judge banged his gavel. “I don’t know nothing about that robbery! Doc would never steal!” She twisted in her chair. “Judge, please! We had a fight. I was mad at him, that’s all! If I signed that paper, I didn’t know what it said. I was drunk!”

  “That, Your Honor,” said Doc’s lawyer, “is the first thing out of this woman’s mouth that my client will not dispute.”

  “Doc, please! I didn’t say none of that!” Kate cried, but Doc wouldn’t look at her, his thin, lined face ashen in the harsh morning light. “I’m sorry! Please, Doc! I’m sorry!”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Judge Spicer muttered. “Sheriff Behan, I can’t hold this man on a statement given by an angry, drunken woman. There’s no evidence here.”

  Weeping, she barely understood the legal maneuvering that followed.

  The sheriff, making a case for setting bail at $5,000: “He’s a suspect in a capital crime, Your Honor.”

  Doc’s lawyer, protesting: “Your Honor, my client doesn’t have anything like that kind of money!” Something about “a continuance, if it please the court.”

  Virgil Earp shouting something at Johnny Behan. Doc being taken out of the room, irons clinking. Morgan calling: “We’ll raise the money, Doc!” Wyatt and another man, talking to the bailiff.

  Spectators, laughing about “black-rope beards” as the room emptied.

  The sound of her own sobs, filling the silence that was left.

  SHE WAITED FOR DOC in front of the jail on the day he was bailed out, trying again to apologize, to explain. Doc wouldn’t even look at her. Wyatt Earp spoke for him. “Go back to Globe, Kate. And don’t come back.” She tried again at the Alhambra. Morgan Earp stopped her before she could get to Doc’s table. At the back of the room, Doc went on dealing, his eyes on the layout, his face expressionless. She sat outside his boardinghouse next, until his landlady threatened to have her arrested for loitering.

  In the end, she went to see James and Bessie Earp, hoping they would intercede, but Bessie was a southerner like Doc, and she saw no way back.

  “They laid hands on him, Kate. They put him in irons, and they set his price like he was a field hand. You sold him down the river for a bottle of whiskey.”

  “If those charges stick, he’ll hang,” James said.

  “In the meantime, he has to live here,” Bessie continued, “among men who are draggin’ his name through shit. He has to swallow their insults and tolerate their jokes—”

  “Because if he talks back,” James said, “Behan will throw him in jail again. And if he jumps bail, it’ll bankrupt Wyatt and me, both.”

  “Against all that,” Bessie said, “sorry don’t count for much.”

  Kate opened her mouth, but there was nothing more to say.

  “Go back to Globe, honey,” James advised. “That’ll be best for everyone.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, sitting side by side on a bench outside the Oriental, Cochise County sheriff John Harris Behan and Tombstone city councilman Milton Edward Joyce watched Doc Holliday’s woman climb aboard the morning stagecoach and settle herself for the long journey north.

  Even at a distance, they could see the marks of prolonged weeping. The swollen eyelids, the puffy face.

  “Doc Holliday is a cruel, cold man,” Johnny murmured. “I believe he has broken that poor child’s heart.”

  “The dear girl was a gift from Jesus to us both,” Milt said solemnly, “and I’m that sorry to see her go.”

  “We had a wonderful evening together,” Johnny confided, straight-faced. “Not that she’d remember it. Christ, but she was drunk!”

  Milt smothered a laugh—not very successfully—and for a few moments the two gave themselves up to quiet, elbow-nudging glee as the coach pulled away.

  “And now she’s left the wicked Doc Holliday here in Tombstone,” Johnny observed, “hung like a millstone around Wyatt Earp’s neck.”

  “God bless her! What’s next, then?” Milt asked cheerily.

  Johnny stood and stretched luxuriously before surveying the busy street before him. Mule-drawn ore wagons, delivery vans, saddle horses. Pedestrians hurrying to accomplish as much as they could before the heat of the day set in. “Word is, Wyatt Earp just mortgaged everything he owns to post bail for Doc Holliday.”

  Milt stood, too, and
came to Johnny’s side. “So we know exactly what his property is worth at current market prices.”

  “County taxes ought to be adjusted accordingly,” Johnny said.

  “I imagine,” Milt murmured, “it would do no harm if I were to mention that to the city assessor.”

  “At your earliest convenience, if you please, Councilman.”

  “Shall we go after John Meagher, too?”

  Meagher owned the Alhambra, and he’d helped Doc post bail.

  “Leave him alone for now,” Johnny said, “but . . . Perhaps the city ought to reconsider the valuation of James Earp’s tavern.”

  THE PEOPLE OF TROY CRIED OUT IN FEAR

  A SEETHING FLOOD OF FLAME ROLLED CLOSER

  THERE IS NO SHADE IN THE HIGH CHAPARRAL. CATCLAW and white thorn and palo verde are rarely taller than a half-grown child. A sizable man can reach the top of many mesquite trees, though he’d pay for that foolishness with an armpit full of thorns. There is barrel cactus and prickly pear, cholla and a lot of ocotillo, but only snakes and rodents can rest in their shadow.

  Even in a mild year, the summer heat is ferocious, but 1881 was the hottest anyone could remember. In mid-May, the temperature was well into the nineties by five in the morning. Rats panted in their lairs and lizards were breathless. Dogs dug holes under boardwalks and hid. Draft horses died in their traces. Paint blistered and flaked off wood.

  Encased in corsets, wrapped in layer upon layer of flounced fabric, Tombstone’s ladies gazed longingly at the white cotton simplicity of a Mexican shift. In woolen suits or heavy denim, lawyers and engineers, accountants and carpenters, blacksmiths and bankers, merchants and mechanics—anyone who worked above ground—envied those who labored in the constant cool darkness of the mines. Those with old and aching wounds—Doc Holliday, James Earp, Milt Joyce among them—experienced some relief from their pains, though not enough to compensate for the malevolence of the weather. Two ice factories ran around the clock but could not keep up with demand. Driven by a furnace wind, the acrid summer dust was inescapable; laundrymen and housewives despaired. Grit peppered food and tainted drink. It settled in the hair, in the ears. Noses clogged with it, and eyes felt scoured. Consumptives weren’t the only ones who suffered from chronic coughs.

  Sunset brought little relief. Rainless thunderstorms cracked and boomed and tore sleepless nights to pieces. Dogs were kicked. Women were beaten. Children were whipped. Drinking became a blood sport. Anything could set off a fight. A misheard word, a shoulder brushed. Anything.

  On the last day of May, Editor Clum warned, “A high tide of crime threatens to inundate our city’s streets.” The stagecoach killers were still at large. Geronimo was stirring up trouble again. Cow Boy raids on cattle herds—foreign and domestic—were bolder by the week. Curly Bill Brocius stayed out of town, but the younger, wilder rustlers frequented Tombstone’s bars and brothels after collecting their cut of the summer cattle sales. Drunk and singing, they’d link arms and parade down the center of Allen Street, blocking traffic in both directions: daring someone to complain, hoping Ben Sippy would try to arrest them. Shimmering with belligerence, elated by the prospect of a fight, they broke windows, shattered saloon mirrors, and started brawls with miners. Business suffered. Schoolchildren were at risk. Townspeople were scared to go out at night. An accountant’s wife had been accosted in broad daylight.

  In early June, Mayor Clum proposed an amendment to the town charter. “Tombstone is a city, not a mining camp,” he argued. “Cities appoint police chiefs who work at the pleasure of the administration and are not subject to the whims of the electorate.” After some discussion, Council agreed and the duties of the police chief were carefully defined. Ben Sippy could continue in the role, but from now on he was to prevent breaches of the peace. He was to suppress riotous behavior and disorderly assemblages. He was to arrest and jail every person found violating any law or ordinance, as well as any person found committing acts injurious to the quiet and good order of the city, including public intoxication, brawling, quarreling, vagrancy, and the public use of profane or indecent language.

  To the mayor’s surprise, a majority of City Council went on to pass the ordinance that Virgil Earp had recommended right after Fred White was shot. Carrying guns was now forbidden within city limits. And Tombstone went beyond Dodge City’s response to violence. Banned weapons included knives as well as every type of firearm, although permits to carry pistols would be issued, if applied for.

  The reaction was immediate.

  The Nugget condemned the ordinance with a furious editorial that began, “Our forefathers gave us the right to carry arms” and ended with a list of ways its readers could circumvent the law. Sales figures at Spangenberg’s gun shop tripled, and a shooting range was added to the back of the store where customers and “sporting folks” could test their purchases.

  Scrawled death threats began arriving at the mayor’s home. “Clum you are a ded man” was typical, but one neatly written letter showed evidence of education. “You have stepped beyond your legal bounds, Mayor Clum, and you shall pay the price. Sic semper tyrannus!” Upon opening that one, the mayor’s first thought was of Doc Holliday but as Tombstone’s postmaster, John Clum had access to samples of his handwriting on envelopes the gambler regularly posted to Savannah and Atlanta. Holliday used an elegant Spencerian script, not the plainer McGuffey style of the death threat.

  “Dr. Holliday, what do you make of this?” Postmaster Clum asked the next time the Georgian came in to mail a letter.

  “Tyrannis is spelled wrong. I would judge this the work of a literate man who has come across Latin now and then, but who has not studied the language in a formal way.”

  “Any idea who might have sent it?”

  “A southerner might be more inclined than most to quote Mr. Booth in this context, and while I hope never to stoop to slander . . . I have seen Mr. Ringo at the library. You might check his handwritin’ on the records there against this note.”

  It was a match.

  A few meditative hours later, Mayor Clum decided that it might be a good time to take that trip up to St. Louis he’d been considering.

  THERE IS NO SUCH THING as whiskey too bad to drink. That was the prevailing attitude on the American frontier, but on the afternoon of June 22, 1881, the owner of the Arcade Saloon reluctantly concluded that common wisdom was sometimes in error.

  Cursing his supplier for a villain and a thief, he told one of his boys to roll the offending cask of god-awful rye into the alley behind the bar and dump it.

  The workman took that opportunity to have a quiet smoke. When he was done—not wanting to take a chance on setting anything ablaze in a town constructed from tinder-dry pine—he carefully dropped the smoldering stub of his cigarette into the enormous puddle of spoiled whiskey. It was an innocent mistake. Never having seen a chef flambé food, he believed that any liquid would put out the ember. Fifty gallons of alcohol burst into flame.

  Pushed by a dry, hot desert wind, the blaze spread with stunning speed. Buildings bordering the alley were engulfed even as the workman’s screams raised the alarm. Miners boiled out of the pits. Offices and stores emptied. Every able-bodied man ran toward the center of town. Hundreds set to work, dipping buckets into horse troughs, flinging water against forty-foot walls of fire. They might as well have puckered up and spit, for all the good it did.

  Frantic, they battled smoke and heat to bring out people trapped inside stores and offices and hotels. They beat burning boardwalks with wet blankets, tore burning canvas awnings down with bare hands, climbed on one another’s shoulders to ax away burning balconies. When all that that failed to slow the fire, they hitched mule teams to chains and pulled down whole buildings, still hoping to contain the blaze, but the conflagration only got fiercer as liquor casks in saloon after saloon added fuel to the flames.

  Dark against the afternoon bright sky, a column of black smoke drew the eyes and curiosity of rootless young men who called their saddles
home. As the sun went down on what was left of Tombstone, those who’d fought the fire salved blistered skin, coughed soot and ash from seared lungs, and fell exhausted onto whatever makeshift beds were available on the unburned edges of the town. While they slept, Cow Boys from miles around converged on the city, whooped with delight at the entertaining scope of the destruction, and searched through the smoking wreckage for intact bottles of brandy, bourbon, Bordeaux, and beer.

  That was the scene greeting Mayor John Clum as he stepped down out of the night coach from Benson, just past midnight on the morning of June 23. Young drunks, celebrating devastation. Laughing. Singing. Dancing in the embers.

  Behind him, weary travelers who’d anticipated comfortable rooms in the fine hotels of “the Paris of Arizona” climbed stiffly into the starlight and stared wordlessly at a thin, bent man trudging toward them through the ruins.

  Soot-smeared and filthy, he was recognizable only from his exhausted limp and his terrible cough. Out on bail, even Doc Holliday had fought the blaze.

  “There are beds in Schieffelin Hall,” he told the passengers, lifting his chin toward a large building that had escaped the fire intact.

  The visitors collected their bags and set off for whatever shelter might await them, but John Clum and John Henry Holliday remained side by side, watching the horseplay of reveling Cow Boys.

  “Hell is empty. All the devils are here,” Holliday noted hoarsely. “And where have you been, Mayor Clum?”

  “St. Louis,” John said. Before he could register his own tears, his unconscious weeping turned to laughter that was just this side of hysteria. “I went there to buy a fire engine and two hose carriages for the city.”

  The dentist put a comforting hand on the mayor’s shoulder. “Irony rules the day.”

  MORNING BROUGHT NO JOY.